Global Health and Development Group at EuroQol EQ-5D Symposium, Bandung, Indonesia

On Sept 8-9, 2016 Francis Ruiz participated in a two-day symposium centred around the recently developed iDSI Reference Case highlights the importance of using generic measures such as QALYs or Disability Adjusted Life Years since they offer comparability and consistency in decision-making.

Work on developing the tariff was led by researchers based at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, Indonesia and Erasmus University, Netherlands, with support from the EuroQol group. Fredrick Purba (Faculty of Psychology, Padjadjaran University, and Department of Psychiatry, Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam) was the lead researcher on the project, and during the symposium he outlined the methods and findings to an audience that included academics from a variety of Indonesian institutions, and representatives from HITAP, WHO and the Indonesian MoH.

Given the importance of this work in supporting the development of HTA in Indonesia, Francis Ruiz (Global Health and Development Group at Imperial College) aimed to contextualize the research by highlighting its role in facilitating in the context of supporting evidence-based coverage decisions, and the broader requirements for successful HTA with a focus on the Asia Pacific region. Drg. Armansyah of the Centre for Health Financing and Health Insurance (Pusat Pembiayaan dan Jaminan Kesehatan, PPJK), the HTA secretariat at the MOH, provided a background to HTA in Indonesia and the latest developments in process and methods. In 2013, iDSI through one of its core partners, the Thai HTA body HITAP, began its engagement with Indonesian authorities with the aim of strengthening its nascent HTA programme, and since then has seen the production of several HTAs. Next steps in the engagement will include continuing to support the Indonesian authorities in refining its methods and processes for HTA, including developing a framework for how any outputs from HTA could be implemented in the system. In addition, colleagues from the Global Health Team at the University of York have embarked on a project to estimate an Indonesian relevant cost-effectiveness threshold that could inform decision rules for HTA-informed policy making. Indonesia’s recent health reforms have provided a rich source of accessible data that can be can be exploited in ways suitable for the purpose of within-country threshold estimation.

In a follow-up newsletter, the chair of QOLMARI, Prof Jan Passchier, discussed the seminar, as well as future plans. The newsletter can be found here.